Meriel Hodgson-Teall

Member of July 2010 Water Team

Armed with nothing but a slightly over-stuffed backpack and a list of phone numbers of people I had never met, I arrived at Heathrow on the 29th June to travel to Northern Thailand to work with a team of other students to install a clean water-system for a village in the Karen Hill Tribe. As I walked into arrivals I was greeted by 6 smiling faces in conspicuously matching T-Shirts sporting the Karen Hill Tribes Trust logo and the arbitrary ‘I’m-going-travelling-so-my-parents-made-me-wear-this’ bum-bag. Having all watched a BBC documentary about the Karen wives just days before we shared our concerns about how we would survive of just rice, leaves and baked-rat for 4 weeks and how one could possibly make use of a bunch of twigs as a replacement to toilet paper. After a 14 hour flight to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand we arrived, significantly jet-lagged, and made our way to the hostel to get some sleep. Contrary to our expectations, however, we were not confronted with the realities of Karen lifestyle just yet. These first few days were spent exploring Chiang Mai itself, visiting temples and museums, doing a spot of shopping and sampling the national cuisine, and on our last day in Chiang Mai we signed up to a cookery course which taught us some of the basics of Thai cooking.

Just as we had settled into this laid back lifestyle we were bussed off to Khun Yuam, a smaller town further North where one of the local organisers for the Charity, Salahae, lived. Here we were supplied with mosquito nets and wellies and warned that we would be expected to be on our best behaviour in the village, that the girls were not to dress provocatively or drink excessively, and to be careful about going to the toilet in the wild because, as Salahae would not stop telling us (in fits of laughter I hasten to add), someone had once been caught ‘doing their business’ by a pig and had been ‘bitten on the bottom’. Finally, on day 6 of our trip, we arrived in Mai Le, the village where we would be staying.

The next morning we were up at 6 to start the fire for our breakfast of egg fried rice and to prepare our lunch of plastic bags filled with more egg fried rice, this time with cucumber and tomato thrown so that we would get some variation. By 8 o’clock we were ready to set off up to the water source, carrying long plastic pipes and hoes for digging the trench up with us. After two hours pathetically trailing behind the Karen villagers who had turned out to help us, exposing us as weak and feeble westerners as they stormed up the mountain carrying five times as many pipes as each of us and wearing nothing but flip flops on their feet, we arrived at the source. We then left the Karen men to get on with building the water tanks, cutting down any tree that was in our way and laying the first pipes (excluding our boys from these macho-activities), while we joined the women in the ‘easy’ task of digging the trench. The next two days continued like this, and by the third day we were close enough to the village to start on the second set of tanks. We were put to work fetching rocks from the river and carrying them up the hill using baskets strapped across our foreheads with a single strap, something which the Karen women found endlessly funny, giggling to each other as we stumbled under the weight. This immediately became a test of endurance for some of the sportier members of the group, devastated to learn that they could not keep us with either the Karen women or some of the children who came to help on weekends. After the stones we carried gravel, and then cement and sand as the final components of the base of the tanks. We then helped to dig cement mixing pits and immediately set to work mixing cement by hand and then finally carrying it from the pits to the place where the tanks were to be built. Within two weeks in the village the final work on the tanks was complete, and all that remained to do was for each of the villagers to dig a trench and lay pipes to their individual homes.

Having completed the manual labour part of our project and proved ourselves to the villagers, we were invited to take part in an animist ceremony to bless the water coming from the source and ward off any evil spirits. We hiked back up to the top of the mountain and watched nervously as a pig was sacrificed, its heart and blood offered to the spirits and the rest of the animal being prepared for a traditional Karen feast in celebration of the completed project. This was our first chance to taste real Karen food, and much to our surprise it was rather different to the Thai food we had come to know and love. From boiled pig intestines cooked with herbs found from the surrounding area and blood to curry made out of pig skin and leaves, we all bravely stepped up to the task of trying this new cuisine and could not help but feel that once again the Karen were getting a great deal of enjoyment out of seeing us taken so far out of our comfort zone.

On our last day in the village we were told that there would be a party in honour of our visit and to celebrate the completion of the project with those who had not participated in the animist ceremony (the majority of the villagers being Catholic, with a few Protestants and Buddhists). Two pigs were slaughtered and cooked for the party, and once again we were able to sample the traditional Karen cooking first hand. This was undoubtedly one of my personal highlights of the trip, getting to see all the people we had met come together and being given gifts of hand-made bracelets and necklaces by the women we had been working side-by-side with.

Having left the village, KHT had organised for us to go on a 3-day trek as a reward for all our hard work. We camped in an ex-army base near the border of Myanmar. The next few days were spent cooking side by side with the members of the Karen who had chosen to come on the walk with us, hunting for food and learning how to catch shrimp in the river. For dinner we were prepared a feast of the all different prey we had encountered on our walk, including owl, frog, baboon, mole-rat and the infamous baked rat we had all seen prepared just weeks ago from the comfort of our own homes, watching back then in horror. Having by this point seen multiple sacrificing of pigs first hand and tried an array of unusual foods, this now seemed fairly standard and we all tucked in to our feats with great gusto.

For two members of the group this was time to say goodbye, and we travelled back to Chiang-Mai together to see them off. I then travelled down to the old capital of Sukhothai to see some ruins and soak up some of the culture, and then on to Bangkok for some more sightseeing. The last few days of the trip were spent relaxing on Koh Phi Phi, one of Thailand’s most beautiful islands, before catching the night-bus back up to Bankok to make my flight home.

All in all, this was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life, and I would without a doubt recommend the trip to anyone wanting to do something worthwhile during their holidays. If anyone is interested in finding our more or making a donation to the charity, the website can be found at http://www.karenhilltribes.org.uk/.

In July 2008, I and six other students from Cambridge University travelled to the North West region of Thailand in order to build and install a drinking water system for a remote Karen village that previously did not have access to one.

The team consisted of five Engineering students, a Chemist and a Geographer, all third years apart from one, who was a first year. The charity which organised the project is called ‘The Karen Hill Tribes Trust’ (KHT). This charity works specifically with the Karen people in Thailand, providing not only clean drinking water systems, but also sending teachers and funding for some local students to gain a higher level of education. As a brief background, the Karen people are Tibetan in origin, being found today mostly in Burma (7 million) and North East Thailand (400,000). Although originally nomadic, the Thai-Karen have settled mostly in small villages where they rely on their own farmland for the staple foods of rice and vegetables. Although the government does invest some money in basic services, they do not provide drinking water and even an electricity supply is not yet found in all villages.

KHT install roughly ten clean drinking water systems every year around the region, with their aim to give every Karen village its own supply as soon as possible. These systems drastically cut back the incidents of illness and death amongst the villagers due to water-based diseases, most notably typhoid and cholera.

Our team was reasonably small, only seven students, but our project was, I believe, fairly large. We were helping to build a water system in a particularly remote village near Mae Sariang, called Ban Hue Na. They had an existing system, built by the government, but it was poorly filtered and taken from below the rice fields so the water was full of chemicals.

We found the tanks whilst looking around the village and they did not look clean. The inspection hole at the top looked like it was leaking (taking the grime from the top of tank to the inside) and the concrete was cracking. In the last year six members of the village contracted typhoid and during the hot season there simply wasn’t enough water.

The trip up to the village was exciting; Penelope wasn’t exaggerating when she said it was remote. It had been raining and the trucks really struggled to get up the muddy hills, we had to put chains on the wheel of our van. It made me wonder how they get to the hospital in rainy season. (Unfortunately I found out the answer – they walk. It wasn’t very comforting).

When I first set out to go to Thailand as a volunteer, I did not really know what to expect. I had heard many stories about what it would be like, but I was then told that it would probably not be like that at all. That made me wonder a bit, but now I see that every person has his/her own personal experience of their time in Thailand, and it is this personal experience they share with people who come after them.

I had seen pictures of the place I was going to, so I had some expectations as to what it would be like to be out in the forest. I remember coming on the bus from Chiang Mai with expectations of the roads being worse than they are, and there was even a road all the way to my village! I was expecting a dirt-track.

My first encounter with the village and its people, I think will be with me for a very long time. Salahae took me to the village on a Sunday morning, and the first thing I noticed was the church, and a few huts and houses on either side of a dirt-track, which is the main street of the village. Salahae brought me to a house and said “This is your Mo, and this is your sister.” I turned around and saw two bright smiling faces. The whole atmosphere was so warm and welcoming, which made me very happy I was going to stay in this particular place.

My first experience of living with the Karen Hilltribes was in Huay Ku Pa. I can clearly remember being dropped off in the village in January with Nootsabar asking me if I spoke any Thai, which I did not, and then informing me that nobody in the village spoke any English - possibly one of the most nerve-wracking moments of my life when they then left me there! However, the entire village was so welcoming and so keen to see me that from that very first moment I was settled in. My Karen mother was called Sum-See and she was one of the kindest and most generous people I have ever met. Throughout my time in the village she provided me with amazing food and the most brilliant care I could ever have imagined. The children in the village were also fantastic. Every evening they would come over to the house to chat, play games and watch TV in my mother’s house. Notalie, the daughter of the headman was always there to keep me entertained, taking me into the jungle to collect plants and catch fish for dinner and showing me the games that the Karen children played; she was particularly special to me.

When not involved in other activities at weekends, I was able to spend the time integrating into the daily routine in Huay Ku Pa. I spent most of my time with the Karen children, going swimming in the river, collecting fish and plants in the jungle, playing volleyball and other traditional Karen games, but I also helped to shell fruits, making a roof out of leaves and watching the older women weaving. It was fantastic to completely immerse myself into their way of life, even though they tried to treat me like royalty all of the time and gave me lots of fish when I failed to catch any!! I went along to Church whenever I was invited, in the evenings and on Sundays, where although I didn’t understand the service at all, it was really nice to feel like a part of the community. The food was absolutely brilliant; I ate rat, snake, frog, condensed milk sandwiches and of course, a lot of rice! Anything that my mother gave to me I ate as I felt it was really important to integrate as much as possible as this only heightened my already amazing experience.

I took part in both of the English camps that ran during my stay in Thailand, these being in Mae La Noi and Khun Yuam. I found that these were really worthwhile weekends, with a lot of support from the teachers to make the day’s really good fun for the older children. The pupils seemed to have a lot of fun as well as practicing their conversational English, and some teachers took the opportunity to learn new teaching methods and games for use in the classroom. I have no suggestions for the future as to how these could be run differently, as everything seemed to go perfectly!

Mae Hoi water project was one of the most fantastic and rewarding experiences of my life. We were in a very small, traditional Karen village in very remote mountainous countryside. They have never had clean drinking water and we were there to install a clean water system ensuring that their health would be better in the future and that the Government might now give them electricity. We worked closely with the Karen people to dam the source, dig trenches several kilometres to the village and then build large storage tanks and standpipes. We were made to feel very welcome by the villagers. We worked solidly for 5 days, by which time it was almost completed, only needing the morning of the 6th day to cover the pipe that was carrying the water to the village. The entire 2 weeks was excellent fun and I would get involved in a water project again in an instant!